Secret in the Stone

by Kamilla Benko

  With that, she nodded to them, and walked off. And as she did, it seemed as if the hope and warmth Claire had felt for only a moment followed the mayor out of the tent. The cold truth set back in: they were trapped.

  Claire whirled on Sophie. Fireblood again hung on her hip, even though it was technically Claire whom Sena had given it to originally. But that wasn’t what was bothering Claire now, or at least, bothering her the most.

  “Why did you give in?” she asked. “What about the Malchains? What about the moontears?”

  “Relax,” Sophie said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. “We clearly weren’t going to win that argument now, were we? Also, didn’t you see that flute shop? Maybe someone there can make the crystal flute work. I think it’s broken.”

  Claire felt her spirits lift. “You think so?”

  She hadn’t thought of it that way, that it could be the flute that was broken, and not her. But it made sense, now that she thought of it. According to Terra’s story, the instrument had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. In all that time, something probably had gone wrong with it. After all, Claire had to be Arden’s heir. She had released the unicorn. She had proof.

  Reaching into her pocket again, she pulled out the soft strands of unicorn mane. Without moonbeams touching them, they seemed slightly less wondrous than they had in the glade. But just by holding them, Claire felt a kind of peace enter her. The unicorn was still out there. There was still hope.

  “Of course,” Sophie said, turning her head so quickly that her ponytail snapped in her direction. “Every second here is time wasted, another second the moontears haven’t been woken and the Malchains are all alone in that cottage. So stop lollygagging,” she said, using a phrase Mom sometimes said when Claire stared a little too long out the kitchen window, daydreaming of new art projects while the dishwater in the sink lost its suds and cooled. “We’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Entering the kaleidoscope of color and sound of Exhibition’s Row once again, Claire half felt like she’d ended up in a carnival instead of a campsite. And just like at a carnival, it was almost impossible to keep track of Sophie.

  Claire looked up from a display of flowering paints (“Watch your colors blossom across your scroll!”) just in time to see Sophie talking animatedly from the opening of a quieter-looking tent.

  “Fine eye,” the merchant was saying with a nod to a small bottle set before Sophie, “that is my latest experiment: Unicorn Cream.”

  “You hear that, Claire?” Sophie asked, widening her eyes meaningfully at her sister. “Unicorn Cream.” She spun around to address the merchant. “Does it, er, attract a unicorn with a certain scent or something?”

  “Ha!” the merchant laughed. “Attract a unicorn—that’s funny, girl. No, I call it that because it’s meant to enhance guild magic, the same way a unicorn artifact would.”

  “Bramble, what are you telling our new arrivals?”

  Claire turned to see the friendly-faced Cotton walking by, his arms full of firewood. The rider shook his head, the colorful threads in his hair swaying like a bouquet of sea anemones. “Mayor Nadia wouldn’t be happy if she knew you were still trying to push your Unicorn Cream. These girls don’t know any better.”

  “You always were a stick-in-the-mud,” Bramble said, waving a dismissive hand. “You never know. Perhaps this could be the batch.”

  “I doubt it!” Cotton said as he continued past them with his heavy load. He looked down at the girls. “I’d stay away from experiments, if I were you. You never know what might happen. We recently lost our two strongest alchemists—the ones who taught us how to wake the chimera in the first place—to an experiment gone wrong at the seams of the world.”

  “Cotton!” a woman in an apron called as she stomped by, her hands full with a large cauldron. “Are you waiting for the firewood to take root? Let’s get moving!”

  As Cotton and the woman hurried away, the sisters turned their attention back to Bramble’s wares.

  “So,” Sophie said, her disappointment as tangible as a pebble in Claire’s shoe. “So … I guess the Unicorn Cream won’t work.”

  “Cotton doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Bramble said dismissively. “The Unicorn Cream might not be my greatest creation, but you won’t find better Hollow Packs anywhere else.” He lifted two rucksacks down from a shelf, one a soft powder blue and the other lavender. “Spinner-sewn to contain just short of everything, with root support so that they never feel heavier than your hair.”

  “What do you mean, ‘just short of everything’?” Sophie asked, running her fingers across the fabric.

  “I mean you can put everything in the world in it, except if you put the last thing in, it might tear.” Bramble chuckled. “That’s the theory, anyway—it’s never been proven one way or the other.”

  “Perfect!” Sophie exclaimed, lighting up. She reached over to take the satchels.

  “Hang on, miss.” Bramble held up his hand. “That’ll be fifty guilders—twenty-five apiece.”

  Sophie’s face fell and she looked at Claire anxiously. “I, you see …”

  Claire stepped forward and handed the man the last sapphire she’d pulled from her almost-a-princess dress before the mayor had thrown it away. The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Gemmer-touched?” he asked, nodding. “That is indeed a fair trade. We don’t get many—any, really—Gemmer items. Two Hollow Packs and … sixty guilders.”

  He counted out some coins and handed them to Sophie, who pocketed them silently before turning away.

  Trying to cover up her sister’s rudeness, Claire thanked the seller profusely before hurrying to catch up with Sophie.

  “Which way to the flute stand?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie admitted. “It’s just so big.” Her eyes swept across the market. “We’re not being practical about this. Let’s split up. I’ll search for the flute stand, while you be on the lookout for something that can help us track the unicorn. We can meet up at our tent before the welcome feast, and head over then.”

  It made sense. Claire knew slightly more about magical objects after her lessons at Stonehaven, but as she pulled the flute from her Lock-it Pocket and handed it to Sophie, she hesitated. “Are you sure we need to split up?” Claire asked.

  Sophie wrinkled her nose, puzzled. “You don’t mind trying to face down the wraiths by yourself, but you don’t want to be alone at a market?”

  “This is completely different,” Claire protested. “That wasn’t a choice.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Sophie said, and she shoved half the guilders from the sapphire into Claire’s hands, before spinning around and walking away.

  Claire would have protested harder, pushed back against her sister’s bossiness, but she’d seen something funny in Sophie’s eyes—something that told her that her sister wanted to be left alone. Turning in the opposite direction, she began to wander through the displays. Something had definitely upset Sophie, and if she had to guess, Claire would have said it had to do with being a lackie.

  Lackie. Claire hated that word. Her sister didn’t lack anything. But maybe Woven Root would be a good place for her to experiment …

  Maybe the alchemists knew something …

  Maybe …

  Claire realized she was having those tempting thoughts again. The thoughts that said stay where it’s safe and leave well enough alone and Royalists! But she shook her head, trying to make those thoughts go away, because she knew that, after all they needed to accomplish—saving the Malchains, finding the unicorn, and waking the moontears—they were eventually going to go home. Real home. And that was not here.

  Claire wandered for a while, allowing herself to be dazzled by all the thriving activity of the Woven Root marketplace. It was so different from the echoing halls of Stonehaven, where people hammered and sweated all day to make even a little bit of magic stick. She stopped a moment to watch a teenage Spinner and Tiller wo
rk together to dip shirts into a cauldron of vegetable dye.

  “Excuse me,” Claire asked the wide-faced girl stirring the cauldron, “but what color is in there?”

  “The color of invisibility,” the Tiller girl said, and grinned as Claire’s mouth fell open. The Spinner boy next to her nodded, and waved his hand at the empty clothesline above his head. “This batch is special ordered by the mayor.”

  Claire hesitated, then raised her hand. Her fingers brushed against something soft and light and slightly damp. A breeze brushed by, and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of rustling fabric, like ghosts’ whispers.

  “Are you interested in anything?” the Spinner boy asked. Claire was about to say no when she saw a little sign that read, “No tears, no tears! We fix everything.”

  “You fix everything?” Claire asked. “Could you fix a flute?”

  “Everything cloth, that is,” the boy amended. “I’m good with a needle and thread, but I’d have to be a Spyden to be able to patch a flute with just that.”

  “What’s a Spyden?” Claire asked, desperate for anything that could help and aware of time slipping. “Where can I find one?”

  From Claire’s left, the Tiller girl chuckled. “You don’t go seeking a Spyden, not if you know what’s good for you.” The girl began to stir the contents of the cauldron. “They’re fascinating creatures, though, I give you that. They can patch any problem with their silk and are so good at the spinning wheel, they can spin answers out of thin air. Topher, I need you to keep stirring! Or else this batch will go bad.”

  As the boy hurried to help, Claire pondered the girl’s words. Answers out of thin air … answers like where the last unicorn had gone? Claire wanted to press more, but the girl and boy were hunched over their dye frantically throwing in more petals and ground roots. Invisibility, it seemed, was no easy task, and Claire trudged away.

  As the sun rose overhead and the day grew hot, Claire stumbled into a shop that appeared to be empty. It was made of woven branches and twigs that heaved and sighed slightly with the breeze that passed through the archways.

  All along the walls, shelves were filled with wonderful objects, like never-popping soap bubbles, intricately carved boxes, candles that filled the air with taste instead of scent, and even a pair of gloves that promised to sense things just like skin. But what caught Claire’s eyes was the fluttery wave of white roses. The petals swayed in the breeze, making a soft crinkly sound that reminded her of something.

  They weren’t roses—well, they were, but they hadn’t been grown. They’d been folded. Folded out of …

  Claire’s breath caught as she scanned the nearby shelves.

  Paper!

  It had been so long since she’d held a fresh piece of paper. In Stonehaven, apprentices used slate and chalk to mark down their homework since paper—a Tiller specialty—was too difficult to attain on their lonely mountaintop. She knew she should be shopping for something more useful, like a Looking Glass or a Kompass, but this paper … it looked as smooth as cream and as soft as a unicorn.

  “Can I help you?” a voice asked.

  Claire’s head sprang up, and she saw a man with brown skin, about Dad’s age, standing at a bench near the back of the shop. He wore a tunic made of leaves sewn together and his trousers seemed to be made of woven bark, making him blend right in with the walls around him. She wouldn’t have noticed him at all if he hadn’t spoken.

  Now the man dipped his head in greeting. “Would you like to buy some paper?”

  She would, but … Claire shook her head. “I’m actually looking for something that will help us look for something.”

  A thoughtful expression crossed the merchant’s face. “I think I have just the thing. But you’ll have to wait a moment, is that all right?”

  When Claire nodded, the man rustled off. First one minute passed, then two. She eyed the paper. Her fingers were tingling, eager to draw. Surely a single page wouldn’t cost that much …

  With one last glance toward the back, Claire pulled out a fresh piece of paper and tugged her pencil out from behind her ear. Then, she got to work.

  She sketched in a picture of their house. Not Aunt Diana’s mansion, but the small house where she and Sophie had shared a bedroom until Sophie moved into the small study. She could picture everything, down to the chipmunk holes in the stone walls and the spot on the driveway that was still a bit yellow after an incident where a much younger Sophie had decided they should paint it “gold” with permanent outdoor stain.

  But when she was done drawing her home, it still didn’t feel complete. In the corner, there was a little space left. Her art teacher had always said to take up the entire space. Suddenly, she knew just what to add.

  Mom and her curly topknot and Dad with his clear-rim glasses. And as she shaded in their smiles, Claire felt something course out of her accompanied by the contented hum in her fingers. She was almost done, but she needed one more person to put in front of their house. She sketched in Sophie’s dark ponytail, then laid the pencil down. The drawing was complete.

  But as Claire stared at it, Pencil Mom opened her mouth, and though Claire could not hear her, she could make out the words on her lips: We miss you. Claire’s breath caught. Was Mom really saying that—or was it only what Claire wanted to tell Mom?

  Then, Pencil Dad seemed to speak: We love you.

  A tear splattered onto the paper, and Claire rubbed her eyes. Something beautiful and delicately fragile spun itself inside Claire like a glass spider’s web. It was a sweet sadness, to know that you were loved and missed.

  The paper moved out from beneath Claire’s fingertips.

  “Oh!” She looked up to see that the seller had returned and was now inspecting her drawing under a glowing plant bud. “I can pay for that,” she added hastily, feeling shame spread across her cheeks in a warm flush.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the seller said, “paper is common enough, but thank you for offering.” He slid the picture back to her, then held out a little pouch. Undoing the drawstring, he pulled out a thin golden spyglass, the kind that Claire imagined pirates must have used.

  “This,” he said, setting it on a cushion of black velvet, “is a rare beauty, both of Gemmer and Forger craft. It allows the viewer to see for almost unimaginable distances. With this, you can see the pearl spires of the Sunrise Isles’ grand temples across the sea, or to the very top of Starscrape Mountain. Or …,” he raised an eyebrow at her, “… see your old home.”

  Claire hadn’t realized her homesickness had been so obvious. And she didn’t think that even a super special spyglass could see her home.

  “Here,” the seller said, offering the spyglass to her as another customer entered. “Take a look.”

  Slowly, she pressed the spyglass’s cool rim to her eye. She blinked as an eddy of colors came into focus, and then the world snapped into place to show members of Woven Root tending the cooking fires and a man in an apron stringing lanterns between tents, decorating for the welcome feast. Suddenly, he jumped back as Mayor Nadia walked by, smiling and waving to the party preppers as she guided Lixoon, the lion-raccoon chimera, back to the stables. It was a peaceful and happy place, despite Claire’s fears.

  “No,” she heard the seller say over her shoulder. “You need to look up to get outside of Woven Root.” She felt him adjust her elbow slightly. There was another headache-inducing swirl of colors, and then she was looking farther, beyond all that, past the Camouflora illusion, all the way to a dark smudge against the horizon.

  Spinning the lenses, Claire suddenly brought the image into sharp focus to see a hundred bells on top of a hundred towers. Fyrton! It was a Forger city that Claire knew.

  Scanning the streets, she saw the sparkling bits of silver scraps that made up Silver Way, and the wall that she had scaled with the help of Nett’s wisteria bush.

  Then she was looking at a cobbled square, where an entirely different crowd from the one in Woven Root had gathered. At
the center of the square was a massive statue of a bear snarling into the wind. And around it, lined up in neat rows, were twenty or so people in armor. As she watched with wonder, a man in chain mail demonstrated a sword maneuver. A second later, the lines of people mimicked him with their own swords. They were training.

  Her stomach dropped. Not so long ago in Stonehaven, she’d stood with Zuli and Lapis and Geode as they mimicked Jasper’s drills with the spear. And even less time had passed since she’d heard the Royalists’ plans.

  It seemed that Mira Fray would soon get her war.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Claire lowered the spyglass. Arden was dangerous enough with a secret society after them and friends’ blood being turned to stone; she couldn’t imagine how much more terrifying this land would be in the middle of a war. There was so much they needed to accomplish, and all she wanted to do was run home, before things got worse.

  But she—and not Sophie for once—had a plan.

  The golden spyglass lay in her palm, a slender key to the solution. This spyglass would let her and Sophie search all Arden for the unicorn—without having to leave the protection of Woven Root. It was genius!

  “Is that enough?” she asked as she plunked down all her guilders. But even Claire could tell it would not be enough.

  The seller shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. He picked up the drawstring bag and his fingers reached for the spyglass.

  “Wait,” Claire said, remembering what Nadia had told them. “I’m a Gemmer! Is there something I could make for you in exchange? I’m not really much good at anything—I explode things sometimes—but if you have a jewel, I can make it glow for you!”

  “Ah.” The seller’s expression brightened. “That is interesting, but I’m afraid I have no gems and no need for explosions. But,” he tilted his head, “if you include your rather charming drawing, I’ll accept it as payment in full. I’ll even give you a few extra sheets of paper.”